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When Colours Run Riot

There was a phase in the 1970s when interi­or design ran riot. I remem­ber my grandpa announ­cing proudly that he’d dec­or­ated the walls of his small front room with four wildly dif­fer­ent wall­pa­pers and picked out the wood­work in egg-yolk yel­low.

I thought of my grandpa as I walked around Dav­id Hockney’s new exhib­i­tion A Big­ger Pic­ture at the Roy­al Academy in Lon­don. The exhib­i­tion is vast and over­whelm­ing and throbs with wild col­ours and pat­terns. It’s gen­er­ous, showy and utterly inde­pend­ent in spir­it and yet it’s metic­u­lous and some­how dogged too — qual­it­ies that pretty much sum up my grandpa.

Walk­ing through Oxford’s Uni­ver­sity Parks later that day, I felt some­how let down that the winter branches didn’t have the vibrancy of Dav­id Hockney’s trees.

But turn­ing 180 degrees so that the sun was shin­ing on the trunks, the col­ours jumped into life. I got a whole new per­spect­ive. And if that’s not a meta­phor for life, I don’t know what is.

Muted, restrained food is the last thing I wanted after the Hock­ney tid­al wave. I craved the idea of eat­ing a riot of col­our. When in that mood and at this time of year, there’s really only one choice — full throttle, lip-stain­ing, fin­ger-smear­ing, red and yel­low beet­roots. I found a bag of just such a thing for half price at Whole­foods, along with a sil­ver foil hick­ory smoker from Fin­land for £2.29.

I have a dis­astrous record at home-smoking. The last time I tried we had to evac­u­ate the house. But I figured I’d be safe in the hands of the Finns. If you want a really strong smokey fla­vour, this bag will dis­ap­point you. But for a del­ic­ate hint of smoke, without the need for a full evac­u­ation plan, this bag works fine.

Wash the beet­root, but don’t both­er to peel them. Slice into rounds about 1.5 to 2 cm thick. Peel the onions but leave whole. Toss the beet­root, onions, whole head of gar­lic and thyme in the olive oil and bal­sam­ic vin­eg­ar, sea­son and place in a single lay­er inside the foil smoker. Seal the foil and place in a pre-heated oven at 250 degrees C. After 15 minutes turn the heat down to 190 degrees C. Cook for a fur­ther 45 minutes. Remove the pack­age from the oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes before cut­ting open the foil. Peel the beet­root and slice into thin­nish circles.

Make a salad dress­ing from a little olive oil, black­berry vin­eg­ar and season­ing and dress the salad leaves. Pile the beet­root, onions and scoops of goat’s curd over the leaves and trickle over a little of the bal­sam­ic and olive oil from the smoker. After its hour of bak­ing, the gar­lic will be rich, sweet and unc­tu­ous — per­fect when spread on a little sour­dough bread.

I ate my riot­ous salad and bread with beet­root soup that I made by bak­ing beet­roots and apples for an hour and blend­ing with veget­able stock and a little grated fresh horseradish.

My grandpa was wild with his col­our schemes but excep­tion­ally tim­id in his tastes. He would have hated this recipe. But he would have loved the ideas that lie behind it, and that’s good enough for me.

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24 thoughts on “When Colours Run Riot”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen golden beet­root, how lovely. I’m sure Hock­ney would love it. (They’re build­ing a Whole­foods near here, so maybe I’ll up my game after it opens!)
I’ve just been read­ing that if you look at the yel­low high­lights of snow, then at a dark tree trunk, it will seem moment­ar­ily blue — so it seems there’s sci­ence as well as mad­ness in his wild col­ours. Not that I’m really wish­ing for snow to test the the­ory.

Charlie, just thought I would look at ‘Eggs On The Roof’ after see­ing some­thing on face­book. It’s so won­der­ful and inspir­ing- I might even start cook­ing (the boys will faint with shock)!!! Hope you a well and see you very soon, Dulce XXXXXXX

That’s very reas­sur­ing: remem­ber­ing what my bed­room looked like in the 70’s, I thought it was my taste run­ning riot but clearly I was in tune with the times. The beet­root soup sounds won­der­ful.

Oh I envy you — I’m a huge fan of Hock­ney. I love the way he observes life. I have a beau­ti­ful book of his work and one of my favour­ite pieces is a draw­ing of an ash­tray! I also love the huge photo-mont­ages he did. I don’t think I’ve ever home-smoked any­thing, but now temp­ted to try.…smoked gar­lic, mmmmmm.

There are a couple of photo-mont­ages in the exhib­i­tion, along with some beau­ti­ful and very detailed char­coal draw­ings. I’ve nev­er seen Hockney’s char­coal work before — very dif­fer­ent, but very beau­ti­ful.

I would have loved to see your grandpa’s home! When we finally pur­chased our first and own home after only rent­ing… we selec­ted char­coal gray, apple green, rasp­berry, brick, burnt orange, sage and apple red to paint the rooms and it was a riot of col­or and extraordin­ary! It really makes life vibrant and fun! Now we are rent­ing again and back to dirty white which is sad. Life should be full of wild col­or! And this salad is gor­geous (as is the photo of the col­ors in the park!) and the fla­vors sound just as col­or­ful! Love everything smoked. Your posts are always so thought pro­vok­ing…

All I can say Claire is that I am delighted you’re charmed by my posts. I do at least know who I am, although I can’t tell you how you found me! Thank you so much for leav­ing a com­ment — I appre­ci­ate it very much

Lovely look­ing meal. So healthy as well! Memor­ies of Grand­fath­ers are good. Mine was an author of tech­nic­al books, mainly about pre-jet air­planes. When I was 11, he gave me a copy of “How to ser­vice your car”. I thought it was mar­vel­lous!

I think I might paste your meta­phor about the trees above my desk and pon­der it on a daily basis. Won­der­ful. Also love the recipe — a com­bin­a­tion of fla­vours that work so well togeth­er. I’m a late­comer to the beet party but find it irres­ist­ible with goat’s cheese of any descrip­tion.